Hot Rod's First Photographer

Hardly a day goes by that someone in HOT ROD's office doesn't bemoan lost opportunities for interviewing all those pioneers no longer with us, either physically or mentally. To folks lucky enough to grow up in this business, it seemed like hot rodding's founding fathers (and mothers, such as Peggy Hart and Veda Orr) would always be there for us, answering questions and sharing insight that only a founder could. Even now, it doesn't seem possible that those people were all born nearly a century ago.

2/23"I can't see well enough to be sure my subjects are in focus, or to process film, but I like to take a few of the family. This old camera went around the world in my missionary days. The film has been in there for six months; I don't know what's on it. My mother got me interested in photography. She was shooting and doing her own processing before World War I. I have most of her negatives, somewhere. She was good, too. Her 116 Brownie was probably my first camera."

HOT ROD has been lucky, in recent years, to pick the still-sharp brains of staff alumni such as '50s photographers Eric Rickman and Bob D'Olivo. More accurately, HRM readers are fortunate that current management sees fit to devote precious editorial to this kind of historical material. For a bunch of punk kids in their mid-forties, editors Freiburger and Kinnan and their boss, Publisher Pitt, share an extraordinary appreciation for things that happened before they were born.

That hasn't always been the case around here. For one sad example, when pioneer-photographer Lee Blaisdell (pronounced blaze-dell) tried to donate his negative archive of '46 to '48 California hot rods and race cars to Petersen Publishing's photo library a couple of decades ago, he was told there was no room for it. Heartbroken by the company's lack of interest, he instead gave it to Don Garlits, whom Lee learned was building a museum (and who wrote a long letter of appreciation in 1984 that Lee proudly shows to visitors).

Now 90, Lee made all of his unique contributions to this hobby and magazine even before this 61-year-old writer was born. These began in late 1946 and early 1947, when he covered the action at El Mirage Dry Lake and several oval tracks. Lee was anointed official photographer of both the Southern California Timing Association and the California Roadster Association, and he was elected to represent his member club, the Omegas of Santa Monica, at SCTA's monthly meetings. It was during one such gathering in 1947 that he listened to a young stranger express intentions of introducing a monthly magazine devoted exclusively to hot rods. Intrigued by the idea, Lee approached Robert E. Petersen after the meeting, offering to contribute the photos he'd been shooting to the Jan. '48 premiere issue. Pete eagerly accepted, and the rest is hot rod history-and HOT ROD history. Most of the photos published in the first six issues are Lee's. Petersen and his cofounder/coeditor, Robert Lindsay, continued running them even after Lee suddenly stopped shooting cars and left Los Angeles just as the magazine was taking off. Why Lee did that, 63 years ago, is among many mysteries solved on these pages. It's about time.